Year in review 2011: October

As the Winter begins we retreat once again to our tech filled dens. Luckily October had them filled with all sorts of nice tech treats. Everything from the Nokia Lumia 800 going on pre order, to games like Battlefield 3 and Arkham City hitting our consoles, it was a good month to be a geek.

Tanks roll for Battlefield 3 launch

The launch of Battlefield 3 signalled the first time ever that a game came close to toppling COD's crown. The level of hype surrounding the new title, in particular its graphics and multiplayer, had gamers firing up their consoles early doors on launch day. Those who did were treated to tanks filling the streets of London in celebration of the game's launch. Read More

BlackBerry starts giving away PlayBooks

RIM launched a deal in the US and Canada where those after a new PlayBook could buy two and get one free. Obviously geared towards businesses who wanted to kit employees out with the new tablets, it didn't do that much to help the fate of the already struggling QNX powered PlayBook. Read More

Nokia Lumia 800 goes on pre-order

The handset that Nokia hoped would turn its fate went on pre-order in October. After a lengthy leaking process and multiple hands-ons, it was finally set for release to the public. It didn't disappoint, the Lumia turned out to be the best Windows Phone 7 experience on the market, a definite good thing for the struggling Nokia. Read More

Sony buys out Ericsson

The partnership that we thought could never break, like Simon and Garfunkel, eventually split up. Sony bought out the Ericsson half of its mobile phone wing, meaning handsets would eventually have just the words Sony printed on them. The purchase came as yet another shake up within Sony and could mean a change of tack for its smartphone team. Read More

GoPro gets an upgrade in the form of the HD Hero 2

The king of the action cams got itself an upgrade in October in the form of the HD Hero 2. Capable of shooting 120fps slow motion video and super wide, 48fps 960p footage, it easily toppled its older brother from the camer top spot. Read More

Apple TV set was Steve Job's final plan?

The long rumoured Apple tv set is said to have been the last product that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was working on. Unlike Apple's current tv product, which behaves like a set top box, it is said to be a complete piece of televisual hardware, screen and all. Given Apple's design prowess, this is definitely something we would like to see in our living rooms. Read More

Poor Q3 sales from Tom Tom mean death of dedicated satnav?

The satnav continues to keep a select few non smartphone owning drivers happy, but sales have been dwindling since the launch of things like Google Maps and the iPhone. Tom Tom has itself launched a smartphone app which is cheaper and works the same as its purpose built brethren. Poor Q3 sales from the company suggested we might not be seeing the dedicated satnav much longer. Read More

Samsung Galaxy Nexus lands in our hands

The Galaxy Nexus has to be one of the most talked about smartphones this year. Packing Ice Cream Sandwich, a huge curved glass screen and NFC capability, its hardware put it at the top of the Android spectrum. We managed to grab one prior to release and give the phone a go, boy were we impressed, particularly with that sweet 720p display. Read More

BBX appears, we get ourselves snapping

BlackBerry's new QNX powered operating system, known as BBX, made an appearance in October and we were there to grab the info on it. Changes along the lines of the PlayBook were in order as RIM attempts to change the fate of its now struggling smartphone range. Changes made weren't exactly straightforward so we put together a handy roundup article to bring you up to speed. Read More

Covent Garden turns into Arkham City for game launch

October was a good month for gamers with to top tier titles releasing alongside each other. Arkham City blew us away with its open world and rich and colourful storyline. A rather nifty little launch stunt for the game saw Covent Garden transformed into Batman's favourite habit, complete with a Batsuit-clad Bruce Wayne hiding above the crowds. Read More

Nokia says smartphone sales are down 39 per cent

Nokia began posting worrying smartphone sales in the build up to their Lumia 800 launch. Windows Phone 7 couldn't come quicker for the company who was dropping close to half its entire smartphone sales in Q3 this year. Thankfully now things are better, or at least we hope they are. Read More

Google Music to launch in November?

Like a lot of Google's new products this year, Google Music arrived in a beta and was only trickled out to a select few. Rumours of a November launch for the cloud based music service began in November, with hopes that it would arrive following an increased number of labels signing up to the setup. Read More

Transformer Prime outed by Asus CEO

We all knew that Kal-El and quad-core mobile processors were coming, we just didn't know exactly when and in what form. Thankfully Asus's CEO was there to answer our call with a cheeky leak of its new Transformer Prime tablet. We wouldn't have been as excited had the original Transformer not proven such a surprise, this time round however the hype was most definitely there. Read More

We go hands on with the new Motorola RAZR

2011 was the year of the giant Android phone. Things like the Galaxy Nexus and RAZR had us small handed tech journalists feeling relatively sorry for ourselves. The RAZR, with its kevlar back, processor and high quality display would have been sat at the top of our handset list. It was just missing one thing; Ice Cream Sandwich. Read More

1 million condolence messages sent to Apple for the loss of Jobs

Easily the biggest story this year was of course the death of Steve Jobs. What was equally impressive was the tech communities' response to Apple's loss. Everything from flowers, to the little Apple lights in stores being switched off left us impressed. But the real amazing thing was that Apple itself received over 1 million condolence letters following Jobs's death. Read More

iPhone 4S goes on sale, shifts 4 million units in first weekend

Not bad sales figures for a piece of hardware that costs upwards of £400. Who says we are in a recession?The mammoth queues outside Apple stores during the iPhone 4S's launch certainly don't. iOS 5, also released at launch, managed 25 million device downloads within a week. Read More

BlackBerry's founder Mike Lazaridis posts apology for outage

Following a rather critical collapse of BlackBerry's entire service the company's very own founder Mike Lazaridis posted a video apologising for all the problems it had caused customers. Twitter filled with complaints that BBM wasn't working and businessmen the world over faced issues with email. This has now thankfully been fixed but many people's faith in BlackBerry is now shaky. Read More

Sesame Street gets porn hacked

Sesame Street very briefly had the majority of its innocence removed when its YouTube channel was hacked and replaced with pornography. Believed to be a prank by an anonymous hacker, the entire home page and channel was changed. Since the video the pranksters own YouTube channel has been filled with comments condemning the attack. Preserve Elmo's innoscence we say. Read More

Google+ loses 60 per cent of traffic

Despite a relatively early success rate, things rapidly went downhill for Google+ as people who tried it began to return to Facebook. It wasn't so much a drop in the number of users signing up that hit in October, more that people just stopped looking at the website. Shame really as a lot of the ideas Google used were great. Read More

Steve Jobs dies

In all honesty we didn't really want to include this one. Even amongst us tech journalists, who come across hundreds of different devices and tech fans every day, Steve Jobs dying was a major event. It is hard to ignore the differences that he made to the technological landscape we live in. Definitely the saddest but most important story this year. Read More

The baby of the Lint team, Hunter has been a tech fan since he bought his first MiniDisc..and what a waste of money that was. He began writing about electronics at the age of 16 and hasn't stopped since. Nowadays he fulfils his mobile phone and gaming obsession whilst attempting to distract people from his bizarre name. Regular meetings with the Gladiators crew see Hunter often returning to work battered and bruised. Considers himself a music obsessive, was once the most highly decorated scout in the country. Fan of trousers.